Owning Corey (21 page)

“Are you trying to use sex to manipulate me, Ben?”

I nod, unable to speak.

“Well, it’s working. But I just don’t want you to feel like I’m using you, or that you’re… paying me.” His expression is so sincere, so troubled.

“This is just what people do, Corey.”

“What people?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” I remove my hand from his thigh and open the car door. “Think of it as a matter of practicality. You live in my pool house, I need to be able to get in touch with my freaking tenant. Okay? Why do you have to make this so difficult?”

I close the door a little too hard, and he follows me silently into the store, where a lone sales girl smiles brightly at us and twists a finger in her hair.

“What’s the best phone on the market?” I ask her, not wanting to waste any time.

She holds up her own cell phone. “This is the one everybody is dying for. It’s got everything.” She leans across the counter, displaying far too much cleavage to be considered professional. “It’s got the best camera ever.” She flips through picture after picture of herself plumping her lips and showing her barely covered breasts.

“Oh, yeah… nice, very nice. The resolution is fantastic. I’ll take two of these, and here’s my number.” I smile and hand her my business card, which she promptly slips into her bosom.

“Do you want my number, too?” At my confused look, her face turns bright red, and she pulls the business card back out of her top and holds it up between two fingers. “Oh, this is for your account. Most of the time if a guy gives me his card… Well, never mind.” She turns awkwardly away and begins looking my account up on the computer and readying the phones.

I turn and raise my eyebrows at Corey, trying not to laugh at the sales girl’s ridiculous faux pas, and Corey snickers and gives me a discreet thumbs up. I’m not sure what to make of his odd sign of encouragement. Maybe he’s thinking she’s a candidate for a threesome? I hate to tell him, but I’m not really all that into threesomes, and right now all I can think about is him, which is going to be the death of me one way or another.

We pace the store for fifteen minutes, aimlessly browsing the phones we’re not going to be buying, not talking. When the girl finishes programming our phones, she clears her throat puts them on the counter with the boxes and paperwork in a bag.

“Come get yours, Corey.”

He slides up beside me, brushing his fingers purposefully against mine as he takes the phone from my hand. My eyes dart instinctively to the sales girl, but I can’t tell if she’s noticed.

God, I’m so paranoid.

“Matching phones…” Corey muses. Then he snaps a picture of me with his.

“What are you doing?” I laugh and hold my hand in front of my face.

“Setting my phone background. I don’t want to use the generic one that comes with it.”

“Oh.” I blush slightly. “You shouldn’t—”

He leans in and kisses me softly on the mouth, darting his tongue in for one small but obvious lick. Right in front of the sales girl, whose eyes stretch so wide I’m afraid they’re going to pop out. Even worse, I think my eyes are just as wide, and my whole body is vibrating with a potent mixture of arousal and shame.

“Thank you, baby,” he whispers in the stunned silence. “I’ll be in the car.”

We both watch him leave, unable to tear our eyes away. He turns and pushes the door open with his back, biting his lip and giving that damn sexy look that destroys my mind every time I see it. And now I know for sure that he knows what it does to me. He fucking knows it, and he’s using it against me. But why would he want to embarrass me publicly? He knows I’m not ready for anyone to know about us, if I ever will be. And then it dawns on me.

Corey is jealous. He thinks I was flirting with the sales girl.

Against my will, the knowledge makes my heart beat faster. I feel elated, my ego dancing a private jig. But at the same time, I’m mortified. What if someone finds out? I know that girl is going to run right out and tell at least five people before the day is over. It’s just a matter of time before I have to leave the county.

Goodbye life. It was nice while it lasted.

I face the sales girl, having no other choice at the moment. “Cock-blocking bastard,” I say. “He’s just bluffing.”

“That didn’t look like a bluff. My knees got weak.”

Yeah, mine too.

“Nah… he’s just messing around. So how about your number? Can I have it?”

“You really want my number? Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

She hands me a business card and writes her cell number on the back. “I’m off every night after six.”

I smile and take my leave before anything else can happen. Now she expects me to call her, and there’s no way in hell that’s ever happening.

Back in the car, Corey is playing absently with his phone. “You got her number, didn’t you?” he asks without looking up.

I sigh loudly and deliberately. “Yes.”

“I knew you would. You couldn’t possibly have stared any harder at those softcore porn pictures she was showing you.”

“Corey, I was admiring the quality of the photos, not the subject matter. And the only reason I got her number was because you kissed me, and now she’s gonna go run tell everyone in town. Thanks a lot, by the way. We might as well have just fucked on her counter. I had to reassert my manhood by getting her number, which I absolutely did not want, by the way.” I pull out of the parking lot and into the road.

“Reassert your manhood?” Corey leans his forehead against the dashboard. “Liking me doesn’t make you less of a man.”

“You’re right.” I reach out and put my hand on his back. “You’re absolutely right. This is just new territory for me, and I’m struggling, okay? I’m sorry. Please have patience with me. I may be freaking out and acting like an asshole, but one thing’s for sure. I was not flirting with that woman in there, and I didn’t want her number. I panicked.”

He sits upright in the seat, looking calmer. “I know I’m just being stupid. This is as new for me as it is for you.”

“Wow. I guess I just assumed you’d been with men before.”

“I have, but I’ve never been jealous before.”

“Really?” I can’t stop a huge grin from overtaking my face. “Are you sure about that? You haven’t been jealous of anyone else, even in high school?”

“No, Ben. Only you. And now you’re buying me things. I’m getting really confused.”

“What is it with you and the gifts thing? It was supposed to make you happy, not sad.”

“Some men— usually older men— will give you gifts to be with them. Sometimes money.” His face colors, and I’m getting the feeling he’s talking more than hypotheticals and hearsay.

“Has that happened to you?”

He nods and looks down at his lap. “I didn’t have anywhere to go,” he whispers. “I didn’t have anywhere to live. No food. I had a drug habit.”

I park the car in the garage and go inside the house, so relieved not to be in public anymore. Corey sits on the couch looking uneasy, and I sit beside him. I want to be familiar with him, let him know I’m not judging him, so I kick off my sneakers and lean back on the cushy sofa arm, propping my feet casually on his lap.

“Tell me about it,” I urge quietly.

He takes off his boots and leans his back against the opposite sofa arm, bracketing my legs with his longer ones, his bare feet nudging my hips. My feet are together in the vee between his legs, and I wiggle my toes down into the warm spot beneath his ass. In a way, our position feels even more intimate than sex, and we lounge like this for long moments in the quiet of my house. It’s not a lonely quiet like usual, though. It’s nice, and it gives me an unfamiliar squeeze in my chest.

Eventually, his voice breaks the silence, cracked and husky and laced with a darkness I haven’t heard before. “When Granny first passed away, I was still in school. I was on the football team, so I had a lot of friends. No shortage of people I could spend the night with. I was kind of on a rotation, and the parents were oblivious to what was going on. There was one boy, Jamie… I liked to stay with him the most because I had a secret crush on him.” He smiles, but there’s sadness in his eyes. “I did something stupid one night. We were watching a movie in his room on his bed, and I kissed him. I could’ve sworn he liked me too, or I never would’ve had the courage to do it.”

“I take it he didn’t react favorably?”

“I thought so for a minute, but then he freaked out. Made me leave in the middle of the night. It was raining, and I had to sleep under a nearby overpass with a handful of bums. I don’t mind telling you I was scared shitless, and me a big football player. I cried like a baby.”

“My God, what happened?” I’m totally engrossed now, my body so tense with worry for that young, scared boy that my back is up off the sofa arm.

“A man named Harold took me under his wing. Said I didn’t need those stinking riches— that’s what he called them. He said to give him a week and he’d have me making a living in the streets and doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Sounded pretty cool at the time, as young as I was.”

“So what did you do? Where did you stay?”

“I panhandled, pick-pocketed drunks as they were leaving bars…” At my shocked expression, he laughs. “Hey, I didn’t say I was a good person, or that I led a glamorous life.”

I roll my eyes at him. “You’re not a bad person, Corey.”

“Hold your judgment until you’ve heard it all,” he warns. “I ended up doing drugs, pretty much anything I could get my hands on, and for money I would give blow jobs in club bathrooms or alleys near bars. It’s amazing how many straight men will pay for a blow from a guy when they’re drunk, especially if they’ve struck out in the bar and are leaving alone.”

“How did you… you know, get them to do it?”

He chuckles and sways his legs playfully against mine. “Do you really want to know the gory details?”

I nod vigorously, unable to contain my curiosity.

“Tell you what,” he says with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “We’ll go down to the Bottom tonight, and I’ll show you what I did. See if it works on you.”

And with that, I’m instantly hard. I stare across the sofa at him with a mixture of awe and lust. No more pity for the little boy; the man sitting across from me is confident, strong, and sexier than any person I’ve ever laid eyes on. He exudes raw masculinity, so rough around the edges yet so perfect.

“Mmmm…” He bites his plump bottom lip hard and leans forward, speaking in that husky sex voice I could pick out blindfolded in a crowd. “If you fuck me any harder with your eyes, I’m going to make a mess all over your couch, Ben.”

“Oh my God, you’re killing me,” I groan, leaning back onto the sofa arm and pressing a fisted hand firmly against my dick, as if by squeezing hard enough I can make the desire go away.

“No, baby. You’re killing me.” He flips his legs under him and crawls toward me, parting my legs smoothly and climbing between them, stalking me on all fours. “If I don’t get in here soon…” He rubs my asshole through my jeans, sending a jolt of pure animal desire radiating through every nerve in my nether region. “I’m going to lose my mind. You have no idea how badly I want you.”

“Stop it, Corey,” I cry breathlessly before I know what the hell I’m saying. When I catch my breath, I’ve pushed him up off of me with my knees, and he’s looking down at me with a confused, hurt look on his face.

Oh, shit.

It occurs to me too late that it seems like I’m rejecting him, possibly like the boy who sent him out helpless into the rain all those years ago.

He walks away toward the kitchen, running a hand through his hair in obvious exasperation. He looks so edible in those jeans, I want to run after him and throw myself on him. Tackle him to the ground and fuck him until neither one of us can move. But I can’t. My feelings are so damn strong. And so unwanted.

“I don’t want to feel this way, Corey,” I plead with him as he cracks open a beer and downs half of it. “Please make it stop. It hurts. I don’t think I can handle it.”

“Oh, quit whining. Jesus, don’t you think it’s painful for me? You just pushed me off of you like I was a rapist or something. What, do you think I’m forcing you to feel this way? Tricking you into it? I’ve got some voodoo doll stashed away in my duffel bag with your face on it? It’s not about laying blame. You want me. They’re feelings, Ben. They’re real, and they’re yours.”

Just then, Corey’s ring tone interrupts his tirade with an ironically jaunty tune. “Hello?” His voice is gruff enough to scare off whoever is calling, but they stay on the line.

“Yeah, this is my new cell number. Program it in.” He covers the microphone and whispers to me. “My aunt. I texted her my number while you were flirting with the phone sales girl.”

I roll my eyes and push past him to grab a beer for myself.

“No, I’m not spending up all of my money or spreading myself too thin… No… I’m at Ben’s house… Doctor Hardy.” He paces away, talking low into the phone where I can’t hear him.

I follow him and tap him on the shoulder. “Invite them to a late lunch here. Her and your uncle. We’ll cook.”

“Really?” His voice goes up an octave, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Are you sure?”